The 2014 Range Rover Sport adopts Range Rover's aluminum chassis and body and goes on sale this fall. Sport is at the New York International Auto Show. / Land Rover

by James R. Healey, USA TODAY

by James R. Healey, USA TODAY

NEW YORK â?? Many people who live in this city define "car" as a yellow vehicle with a light on top, whose driver collects a fare.

Oddly enough, this city also is the top market in the world for Land Rover's Range Rover Sport, the entry-level model, if you will, of the Range Rover line of high-dollar, high-content, forever-rectilinear SUVs. And in the U.S., Sport is the best-selling vehicle of parent company Jaguar Land Rover.

Sensible, then, for Land Rover to put on the dog for the launch of the 2014 Range Rover Sport, which goes on sale this fall. The dog, in this case, is showy drive Tuesday night up usually packed 8th Avenue (but blocked off and cleared of parked vehicles for the video), ending with a left turn onto 33rd Street and into a party of Range Rover loyalists.

Oh, and the driver is Daniel Craig, the star who plays James Bond in today's films.

The drive-in event is one of the events in the show before the show, the events hosted by automakers ahead of the media preview days for the New York International Auto Show, which begin Wednesday.

There's no direct tie-in with the next Bond movie; he doesn't drive a Range Rover Sport, the automaker says. But if you need a touchstone, Craig's Bond is more like a regular guy than previous film portrayals of Bond; certainly one who gets his hands dirty.

And that is at least tangentially related to the theme for the new Sport: A classy machine moving ever-so-slightly into the mainstream, at least by Land Rover standards.

Range Rover Sport earned its No. 1 standing in the U.S. within Jaguar Land Rover company by attracting a mere 16,491 buyers. Mazda, no market powerhouse, sold that many Mazda5 mini-minivans last year. Ford sells that many F-series trucks every nine days, on average.

So, Land Rover is small, its Range Rover sub-brand minuscule and the Sport version of Range Rover somewhere beneath tiny.

Thus, it won't take a huge jump in sales to start sneaking out of sub-niche and toward mainstream. And Sport has some features that could broaden its appeal.

It abandons the current Sport's steel frame attached to a unibody structure â?? the auto equivalent of belt and suspenders; vehicles almost always either are body-on-frame, or they are unibody, not both. Instead, it uses the full-fledged Range Rover's aluminum body and chassis, shedding some 800 pounds in a fell swoop.

Range Rover was new last December, but doesn't get JLR's new line of engines until this fall, same time the 2014 Sport makes its debut with the new engines: A 340-horsepower supercharged V-6 and a 510-hp V-8. Both are mated to eight-speed automatic transmissions.

Beyond the aluminum construction and new drivetrains, Sport's other salients:

Wheelbase that's 7 inches longer, for more interior space. Sport still is about 6 in. shorter than Range Rover.

Occasional-use third row for two.

Two types of four-wheel drive. One's an automatic full-time system. The other has a low-range set of gears in the transfer case, for serious off-road work.

Automatic start-stop. It shuts off the engine at long stops, turns it back on when the driver wants to go.

Optional auto-park, which fits the vehicle into parallel-parking spots with little help from the driver and, with the newest update, will "unpark" the vehicle and pull back into traffic. Land Rover says the "unpark" feature will be in limited supply the first year, then become easier to get.

Range Rover Sport will come in four models. Prices include $895 shipping: